Alistair MacLean: Ice Station Zebra

"Finish loading the torpedoes, move alongside the «Hunley»load some final food stores, pick up extra Arctic clothing, and that's it, sir."

"Just like that? You said you wanted to make a slowtime dive out in the loch to check the planes and adjust the underwater trim — those missing torpedoes up front are going to make a difference, you know."

"That's before I heard Dr. Carpenter. Now I want to get up there just as fast as he does, sir. I'll see if immediate trim checks are necessary: if not, we can carry — them out at sea."

"It's your boat," Garvie acknowledged. "I'd give my two remaining back teeth to come with you, Commander. Where are you going to accommodate Dr. Carpenter, by the way?"

"There's space for a cot in the exec's and engineer's cabin." He smiled at me. "I've already had your suitcase put in there."

"Did you have much trouble with the lock?" I inquired.

He had the grace to color slightly. "It's the first time I've ever seen a combination lock on a suitcase," he admitted. "It was that more than anything else — and the fact that we couldn't open it — that made the admiral and myself so suspicious. I've still one or two things to discuss with the admiral, so I'll take you to your quarters now. Dinner's at eight."

"I'd rather skip dinner, thanks."

"No one ever gets seasick on the «Dolphin», I can assure you," Swanson smiled.

"I'd appreciate the chance to sleep instead. I've had no sleep for almost three days and I've been traveling non-stop for the past fifty hours. I'm just tired, that's all."

"That's a fair amount of traveling," Swanson smiled. He seemed to be smiling almost always, and I supposed vaguely that there would be some people foolish enough to take that smile always at its face value. "Where were you fifty hours ago, Doctor?"

"In the Antarctic."

Admiral Garvie gave me a very old-fashioned look indeed, but he let it go at that.

When I awoke I was still heavy with sleep, the heaviness of a man who has slept for a long time. My watch said 9:30, and I knew it must be the next morning, not the same evening: I had been asleep for fifteen hours.

The cabin was quite dark. I rose, fumbled for the light switch, found it, and looked around. Neither Hansen nor the engineer officer was there; they must have come in after I had gone to sleep and left before I woke up. I looked around some more and then I listened. I was suddenly conscious of the almost complete quiet, the stillness, the entire lack of any perceptible motion. I might have been in the bedroom of my own house. What had gone wrong? What hold-up had occurred? Why in God's name weren't we under way? I'd have sworn the previous night that Commander Swanson had been just as conscious of the urgency as I had been.

I had a quick wash in the folding Pullman-type basin, passed up the need for a shave, pulled on shirt, trousers and shoes, and — went outside. A few feet away a door opened to starboard off the passage. I went along and walked in. The officers' wardroom, without a doubt, with one of them still at breakfast, slowly munching his way through a huge plateful of steak, eggs and French fries, glancing at a magazine in a leisurely fashion and giving every impression of a man enjoying life to the luxurious full. He was about my own age, big, inclined to fat — a common condition, I was to find, among the entire crew, who ate so well and exercised so little — with close-cropped black hair already graying at the temples, and a cheeful, intelligent face. He caught sight of me, rose and stretched out a hand.

"Dr. Carpenter, it must be. Welcome to the wardroom. I'm Benson. Take a seat, take a seat."

I said something, appropriate but quick, then asked, "What's wrong? What's been the hold-up? Why aren't we under way?"

"That's the trouble with the world today," Benson said mournfully. "Rush, rush, rush. And where does all the hurry get them? I'll tell you — "

"Excuse me. I must see the captain." I turned to leave but he laid a hand on my arm.

"Relax, Dr. Carpenter. We «are» at sea. Take a seat."

"At sea? On the level? I don't feel a thing."

"You never do when you're three hundred feet down. Maybe four hundred. I don't," he said expansively, "concern myself with those trifles. I leave them to the mechanics."

"Mechanics?"

"The captain, the engineer officer, people like that." He waved a hand in a generously vague gesture to indicate the largeness of the concept he understood by the term "mechanics." "Hungry?"

"We've cleared the Clyde?"

"Unless the Clyde extends to well beyond the north of Scotland, the answer to that is, yes, we have."

"Come again?"

He grinned. "At the last check we were well into the Norwegian Sea, about the latitude of Bergen."

"This is still only Tuesday morning?" I don't know if I looked stupid: I certainly felt it.

"It's still only Tuesday morning," he laughed. "And if you can work out from that what kind of speed we've been makin in the last fifteen hours, we'd all be obliged if you'd keep it to yourself." He leaned back in his seat and lifted his voice. "Henry!" -

A steward, white-jacketed, appeared from what I took to be the pantry. He was a tall, thin character with a dark complexion and the long lugubrious face of a dyspeptic spaniel. He looked at Benson and said in a meaningful voice: "«Another» plate of French fries, Doc?"

"You know very well that I never have more than one helping of that carbohydrated rubbish," Benson said with dignity. "Not, at least, for breakfast. Henry, this is Dr. Carpenter."

"Howdy," Henry said agreeably.

"Breakfast, Henry," Benson said. "And, remember, Dr. Carpenter is a Britisher. We don't want him leaving with a low opinion of the chow served in the U. S. Navy."

"If anyone aboard this ship has a low opinion of the food," Henry said darkly, "they hide it pretty well. Breakfast. The works. Right away."

"Not the works, for heaven's sake," I said. "There are some things we decadent Britishers can't face up to first thing in the morning. One of them is French fries."

He nodded approvingly and left.

I said, "Dr. Benson, I gather."

"Resident medical officer aboard the «Dolphin», no less," he admitted. "The one who's had his professional competence called into question by having a competing practitioner called in." -

"I'm along for the ride. I assure you I'm not competing with anyone."

"I know you're not," he said quickly. Too quickly. Quickly enough so that I could see Swanson's hand in this, could see him telling his officers to lay off quizzing Carpenter too much. I wondered again what Swanson was going to say when and if we ever arrived at the drift station and he found out just how fluent a liar I was. Benson went on, smiling: "There's no call for even one medico aboard this boat, much less two."

"You're not overworked?" From the leisurely way he was going about his breakfast, it seemed unlikely.

"Overworked! rye sick-bay call once a day and no one ever turns up — except the morning after we arrive in port with a long cruise behind us, and then there are liable to be a few sore heads around. My main job, and what is supposed to be my specialty, is checking on radiation and atmospheric pollution of one kind or another. In the old submarine days, the atmosphere used to get pretty foul after only a few hours submerged but we have to stay down for months, if necessary." He grinned. "Neither job is very exacting. We issue each member of the crew with a dosimeter and periodically check a film badge for radiation dosage — which is invariably less than you'd get sitting on the beach on a moderately warm day.

"The atmospheric problem is even easier. Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are the only things we have to worry about. We have a scrubbing machine that absorbs the breathed-out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumps it out into the sea. Carbon monoxide — which we could more or less eliminate if we forbade cigarette smoking, only we don't want a mutiny on our hands when we're three hundred feet down — is burned to monoxide by a special heater and then scrubbed as usual. And even that hardly worries me, I've a very competent engineman who keeps those machines in tip-top condition." He sighed. "I've a surgery here that will delight your heart, Dr. Carpenter. Operating table, dentist's chair, the works, and the biggest crisis I've had yet is a cigarette burn between the fingers sustained by a cook who fell asleep during one of my lectures."